A second term can make or break a president’s legacy, writes historian Robert
Dallek

President Barack Obama’s victory in the 2012 election puts him in select company.

He is only the 17th of the 44 presidents to win a second term. Perhaps even more surprising is that if he completes it, Obama will become only the 14th president to serve a full eight years: Lincoln and McKinley died at the hands of assassins in their fifth years, while Richard Nixon resigned rather than be impeached and convicted of high crimes in the Watergate scandal.

It is also noteworthy that Obama’s election marks the first time since 1820 that three presidents in a row have been elected to a second term.

Obama’s greatest historical distinction is being the first African American to gain the highest office. His ascendancy will be compared with John F Kennedy’s 1960 election, the first time the representative of a minority group, American Catholics, won the prize.

Obama’s presidency will also mark the expanding influence of people of colour – not just blacks but the emergence of Hispanics, who have become a major voting bloc. The importance of women in giving Obama a second term will likely be recalled as a prelude to the election of a female president in the not-too-distant future.

In domestic affairs, the Affordable Care law that extended health-care cover to many millions of Americans will be remembered as the signal achievement of his first term. The battle for this reform extended over 100 years, starting with the first Roosevelt and running through Bill Clinton’s presidency. Obama’s re-election ensures Mitt Romney will not be able to dismantle this accomplishment.

Obama’s first-term legacy will include the $787 billion (£550 billion) stimulus, which most economists think fended off a far more severe downturn. In foreign affairs, killing Osama bin Laden, the end of the second Iraq war (at least for the United States), and the winding up of the Afghanistan invasion and occupation, the longest conflict in US history, are sure to be seen as landmarks.

Obama’s rapid and effective response to superstorm Sandy formed a striking contrast with George W Bush’s inept handling of the Katrina catastrophe. The contrast will resonate among historians as a significant marker in the debate between Democrats and Republicans over the federal government’s role in assuring the national well-being.

It is hard to imagine, however, that at this juncture, historians will consider Obama’s presidency as on a par with that of Theodore Roosevelt in the first years of the last century, whose progressive agenda at home and aggressive actions abroad lifted the country out of the doldrums and launched the modern presidency; or with Woodrow Wilson’s advocacy of self-determination and creation of the League of Nations; or Franklin D Roosevelt’s leadership in initiating the modern welfare state, defeating fascism in the Second World War, and putting the country on the path to post-1945 internationalism.

Nor yet does it equal Harry S Truman’s extraordinary upset victory in the 1948 presidential election and his containment strategy that brought long-term victory for the West in the Cold War; or Lyndon Johnson’s civil rights and voting rights laws that fundamentally altered race relations in the United States in the 1960s, as well as Medicare, the prelude to Obama’s health-care reform, and other Great Society laws that added up to the greatest outburst of social-reform legislation in the country’s history.

These five presidents also had their share of stumbles; most notably Johnson’s disaster in Vietnam.

Obama’s limitations so far include his failure to put economic reconstruction ahead of health-care reform, leaving the country with high unemployment. He has not managed to move the country beyond partisan politics, as he had promised, nor to put forward – let alone accomplish – major initiatives on immigration and the environment.

The chance to address economic, immigration and climate issues in a second term as well as the possible appointment of Supreme Court justices who might turn the court in a more liberal direction, assuring the continuity of abortion rights, and overturning the Citizens United ruling on campaign financing – that allows unlimited spending by corporations and labour unions – make Obama’s legacy a work in progress.

As one of several historians at three White House dinners who had the chance to discuss presidential achievements with Obama and his ambition to make a major difference, it is clear to me that he will reach for higher goals in a second term.

The free-flowing conversations at the dinners consistently came back to questions about how past presidents had made gains: he wanted to know how predecessors had overcome public divisions; and how the country’s most effective presidents — Theodore Roosevelt, FDR, and Ronald Reagan in particular — had inspired Congress and the public to accept change.

“The changes in America that meant I could get elected have not yet changed Congress,” he remarked at the first of these – an observation that seems still to hold true today.

He knows that disappointments in a first term need not be a barrier to significant attainments in a second four years, especially in foreign affairs. The Nixon-Kissinger shuttle diplomacy in 1973, which opened the way to Jimmy Carter’s Camp David accords and Reagan’s summits with Gorbachev facilitating the end of the Cold War, are examples of what can be done in a second term.

Obama is also mindful, however, of the difficulties presidents have faced after re-election. He understands that Wilson’s presidency came to grief in the failed peacemaking at the end of the First World War; that Franklin Roosevelt’s four years after 1936 fell well short of greatness and would have marked the end of his service if not for the intervention of the Second World War; that Sputnik, which sparked talk of a missile gap with the Soviet Union, the U-2 disaster that destroyed the Paris summit in May 1960, and an economic slowdown all blighted Dwight Eisenhower’s second term; that the Iran-Contra affair cast a shadow over Reagan’s second go-round; and that the Monica Lewinsky scandal following the 1996 election led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment, the only elected president ever to suffer such a fate.

Of course, Obama understands that history is not doomed to repeat itself and that he could oversee a robust economic expansion beginning in 2013; that he could tie Hispanic voters more firmly to the Democratic party with liberal immigration reforms; that he could preside over a period of peace and use reduced defence outlays to fund infrastructure projects; and that his success could put his party in a position to win yet a third presidential term.

But he understands that all this is partly in the laps of the gods. The next four years will test his skills in trying to persuade a divided Congress to follow his lead. And it will have to be done before he becomes a lame duck president, which will make the challenge of building a positive legacy as difficult as persuading voters that he deserved a second term.

Robert Dallek’s new book, 'Camelot’s Court: Inside the Kennedy White House’, will be published next year